Strongly Exponential Symmetric Spaces
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STRONGLY EXPONENTIAL SYMMETRIC SPACES YANNICK VOGLAIRE Abstract. We study the exponential map of connected symmetric spaces and characterize, in terms of midpoints and of infinitesimal conditions, when it is a diffeomorphism, generalizing the Dixmier–Saito theorem for solvable Lie groups. We then give a geometric characterization of the (strongly) exponential solvable symmetric spaces as those spaces for which every triangle admits a unique double triangle. This work is motivated by Weinstein’s quantization by groupoids program applied to symmetric spaces. 1. Introduction In the late 1950’s, Dixmier [5] and Saito [16] characterized the strongly exponential Lie groups: the simply connected solvable Lie groups for which the exponential map is a global diffeomorphism. They are characterized by the fact that the exponential map is either injective or surjective, or equivalently the fact that the adjoint action of their Lie algebra has no purely imaginary eigenvalue. In contrast, the exponential map of semisimple Lie groups is never injective, but may be surjective or have dense image. As a result, the latter two weaker notions of exponentiality have been studied for general Lie groups by a number of authors (see [6, 21] for two surveys and for references). Recently, a number of their results were generalized to symmetric spaces in [15]. The first main result of the present paper intends to complete the picture by giving a version of the Dixmier–Saito theorem for symmetric spaces (see Theorems 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). The second main result gives a geometric characterization of the strongly ex- arXiv:1303.5925v2 [math.DG] 6 Apr 2014 ponential symmetric spaces which are homogeneous spaces of solvable Lie groups, in terms of existence and uniqueness of double triangles (see Theorem 1.4). This Part of this work was done during the author’s PhD thesis at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and the Université de Reims, France, under the supervision of Pierre Bieliavsky and Michael Pevzner. The author thanks Mathieu Carette for discussions on midpoints and geodesics in symmetric spaces. This work was partially supported for travel by the Belgian Science Policy (belspo) through the Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IAP) PHASE VII/18 project “DYGEST”. The published version of this paper is available at http://imrn.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/ content/abstract/rnt149?ijkey=My6gILrUCEG3Z1z&keytype=ref. 1 2 YANNICK VOGLAIRE is related to a beautiful theorem of A. Weinstein [20] relating the graph of multi- plication in the pair groupoid of a symplectic symmetric space to the symplectic area of such double triangles. Weinstein’s theorem was developed in the context of his quantization by groupoids program and forms, together with the extension of Bieliavsky’s quantization of symplectic symmetric spaces [3], the initial motivation for the present work. Since we will only be concerned with strong exponentiality in this paper, from now on we will drop the adjective “strong”, although nowadays exponentiality has a weaker meaning in the literature. A symmetric space is a manifold M endowed with a family of involutions {sx}x∈M of M, called symmetries, such that x is an isolated (not necessarily unique) fixed point of sx, and such that sx(syz) = s(sxy)(sxz) for all x, y, z ∈ M.A morphism of symmetric spaces M, N is a smooth map φ : M → N such that φ(sxy) = sφ(x)φ(y) for all x, y ∈ M. Some basic examples to keep in mind are the following: n (Ex1) the n-dimensional Euclidean space R with symmetries sxy = 2x − y, (Ex2) the n-sphere Sn where the symmetry at x is the restriction to Sn of the axial symmetry about 0x, (Ex3) the hyperbolic plane Π2 with the Riemannian geodesic symmetries, −1 (Ex4) any Lie group G with symmetries sgl = gl g, as well as two solvable two-dimensional examples: 2 0 0 0 0 0 (Ex5) the space A2 = R with symmetries s(a,b)(a , b ) = (2a−a , 2 cosh(a−a )b−b ), 2 0 0 0 0 0 (Ex6) the space B2 = R with symmetries s(a,b)(a , b ) = (2a−a , 2 cos(a−a )b−b ). The connected symmetric spaces in this sense (due to Loos [9]) coincide with the homogeneous symmetric spaces: the homogeneous spaces G/H of connected Lie groups G, with H an open subgroup of the fixed points set Gσ of an involutive automorphism σ of G (called an involution in what follows). The symmetries in −1 that case are given by sgH lH = gσ(g l)H. Such a triple (G, H, σ) will be called a symmetric triple. When H is the full fixed point subgroup Gσ, we simply refer to the symmetric pair (G, σ). A symmetric triple (G, H, σ) is said to realize a symmetric space M if G/H =∼ M as symmetric spaces. Any connected symmetric space M admits a “minimal” realization as a homo- geneous symmetric space of its transvection group. The latter is defined as the subgroup of the automorphism group of M generated by all the products of an even number of symmetries. It is a finite dimensional Lie group which is transitive on M, stabilized by the conjugation (in the automorphism group) by so, for any o ∈ M, and minimal for these properties. A symmetric space is said to be semisimple (respectively, solvable) if its transvection group is semisimple (respectively, solvable). STRONGLY EXPONENTIAL SYMMETRIC SPACES 3 Every Lie group G is a symmetric space when endowed with the symmetries −1 sgl = gl g. It is usually realized by (G × G, Diag(G), σG) with σG(g, l) = (l, g), where G × G is in general larger than the transvection group of G. Given an involution σ on G, two canonical symmetric subspaces of G are defined by P = −1 −1 {g ∈ G | σ(g) = g } and Gσ = {gσ(g) | g ∈ G}. When G is connected, Gσ is the connected component of the identity of P , and is isomorphic to G/Gσ through σ σ −1 the quadratic representation Q : G/G → Gσ : gG → gσ(g) . A symmetric subspace N of a symmetric space M =∼ G/H is said to be normal if there exists a σ-invariant normal subgroup R ⊂ G such that N =∼ R/(R ∩ H) through the isomorphism M =∼ G/H. Then M is said to be a semi-direct product M1 n M2 of two symmetric subspaces M1 and M2 if M is, as a smooth manifold, a direct product M1 × M2, and if M2 is normal in M. On the tangent space m at a given point of a symmetric space M, there is a structure of Lie triple system [·, ·, ·]: m3 → m, generalizing that of Lie algebra for Lie groups. This trilinear bracket satisfies the properties: (Lts1) [X, X, Y ] = 0, (Lts2) [X, Y, Z] + [Y, Z, X] + [Z, X, Y ] = 0, (Lts3) [X, Y, [U, V, W ]] = [[X, Y, U], V, W ] + [U, [X, Y, V ],W ] + [U, V, [X, Y, W ]]. Any Lie algebra g is a Lie triple system with bracket (1) [X, Y, Z] = [[X, Y ],Z], and if G is a Lie group with Lie algebra g, this structure makes it the Lie triple system at e of G seen as a symmetric space. More generally, if σ is an involution on g and if g = m ⊕ h is the corresponding decomposition into (−1) and (+1)-eigenspaces of σ, then the bracket (1) on g restricts to m as a Lie triple system, and any Lie triple system is of that kind. The Lie triple system at the base point eH of a symmetric space G/H coming from a triple (G, H, σ) is given by the bracket (1) on the (−1)-eigenspace m of the involution dσe on Lie(G). Just as any connected symmetric space can be realized as a homogeneous sym- metric space, any Lie triple system can be realized as the (−1)-eigenspace of a Lie algebra involution. The minimal such realization is called the standard embedding and is defined (as a vector space) by g = m ⊕ [m, m] where [m, m] denotes the span of the operators LX,Y = [X, Y, ·] for all X, Y ∈ m. Conditions (Lts1)–(Lts3) show that the following equations define a Lie bracket on g: [X, Y ] = LX,Y , [LX,Y ,Z] = LX,Y Z, [LX,Y ,LU,V ] = LLX,Y U,V + LU,LX,Y V , 4 YANNICK VOGLAIRE for all X, Y, Z, U, V ∈ m. The involution σ on g is − Idm ⊕ Id[m,m] and one sees that (g, σ) is the infinitesimal data at the identity of the tranvection group. On any symmetric space, there is a unique affine connection for which all the symmetries are affine transformations. This connection is complete, torsion-free, and its curvature is parallel. The curvature R at a point x on a symmetric space is related to its Lie triple system at that point by R(X, Y )Z = −[X, Y, Z]. The exponential map at x is denoted Expx : TxM → M. On a symmetric space G/H with Lie triple system m ⊂ g at eH, the set exp m ⊂ G is an open submanifold of P , so that exp m ⊂ Gσ ⊂ P are open inclusions. On a symmetric space with a fixed base point o, there is a product ⊥ defined ∼ by x ⊥ y = sxsoy. If M = G/H, one proves that s X so = exp X ∈ G for all Expo 2 X X ∈ m, so that the product satisfies Expo 2 ⊥ y = exp(X)y. A point z is said to be a midpoint of x and y if szx = y.